When Vaibhav Mishra and his co-founder Tony D’Souza began exploring how technology could better serve Impact Sector organisations across the Global South, they started by listening. Through conversations with more than 1,000 nonprofits, they identified a recurring challenge: while organisations increasingly recognised the potential of technology, many lacked the resources, expertise and guidance to adopt it effectively. These insights laid the foundation for 10x Impact Labs, an organisation working to bridge the technology and capacity gap by making technology, data and artificial intelligence (AI) more accessible and affordable to nonprofits, philanthropies and public institutions.
For Vaibhav, the vision goes beyond building digital products or delivering technology solutions. He believes that technology can create lasting impact only when organisations have the knowledge, capabilities and confidence to use it meaningfully. Through advisory services, hands-on implementation, capacity building and ecosystem partnerships, 10x Impact Labs aims to help organisations not only adopt technology but also build the capabilities to sustain and scale its impact independently.
From Engineering to Social Impact
After completing his engineering degree in 2018, Vaibhav began exploring how he could use his skills to solve problems beyond conventional technology roles. While many of his peers pursued careers in the IT industry, he was more interested in understanding people, complex systems and finding practical solutions to real-world challenges.
His journey gradually led him towards the Impact Sector, where early experiences working closely with communities, government schools and public institutions shaped his understanding of grassroots challenges. These experiences exposed him to the gap between how programmes and solutions are designed and how they work on the ground. He began to recognise that meaningful change requires an understanding of how people, institutions and systems interact, an insight that would later shape his approach to technology and product development.
Over the years, Vaibhav contributed to more than 10 programmes and 50 tech products across eight sectors. Working across different organisational and community contexts helped him understand that building successful products involves much more than technology. It requires balancing user needs, institutional priorities, available resources and the realities of implementation.
These experiences also revealed a recurring problem. Organisations often invested significant resources in technology without adequately understanding the needs of their users, the problems they were trying to solve or the internal capabilities required to sustain these solutions.
For Vaibhav, this reinforced a fundamental belief: technology should not be the starting point. Understanding the problem, the people and the context must come first, with technology serving as a means to create meaningful and lasting change.
Building 10x Impact Labs
The idea for 10x Impact Labs began taking shape in June 2023. Before committing to the initiative full-time, Vaibhav Mishra and Tony D’Souza spent time understanding the challenges nonprofits faced and testing their approach through pro bono projects. These early engagements helped validate the need for accessible, affordable and high-quality technology support within the Impact Sector.
Both Vaibhav and Tony came from product management backgrounds, having worked closely with social impact organisations to build and scale technology products. While their individual journeys shaped different perspectives and experiences within the sector, they shared a common understanding of the challenges organisations faced and the opportunities technology could create. Their complementary experiences, shared vision and commitment to making technology more accessible became the foundation of their partnership.
With early incubation support from NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore, the co-founders began turning their learnings into a more structured organisation. Their vision was to combine technology expertise, strategic guidance and implementation support with a deep understanding of the realities and constraints of the Impact Sector.
Formally established in early 2024, 10x Impact Labs has grown from two co-founders into a team of more than 25 professionals working across technology, data, AI and social impact.
According to Vaibhav, the organisation has worked with more than 80 organisations, over 10 philanthropic institutions and two state governments, contributing to the development and implementation of more than 100 technology solutions and programmes.
Looking ahead, 10x Impact Labs aims to enable 10,000 nonprofits to access and effectively use technology by 2030, with a broader ambition of strengthening technology capabilities across the Global South.
Making Technology Work for the Impact Sector
While speaking to The Logical Indian, Vaibhav explained that making technology work for the Impact Sector requires more than funding or access to digital tools. Organisations often face challenges in identifying the right solutions, evaluating technology partners, building internal capabilities and ensuring that technology becomes part of their everyday operations.
To address these challenges, 10x Impact Labs works across the entire technology journey, from strategy and product design to development, implementation and adoption. Its work spans technology, data and AI advisory, end-to-end product development, monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), technology and AI capacity building, and thought leadership. The focus is on helping organisations make informed decisions and build solutions that are practical, scalable and sustainable.
Beyond working with nonprofits and philanthropies, 10x Impact Labs also partners with government departments on GovTech initiatives, supporting design and product strategy, digital public service delivery and citizen-facing solutions. This work focuses on making public systems more accessible, efficient and responsive to the needs of the communities they serve.
For Vaibhav, the measure of successful technology adoption is not simply whether a product has been built or deployed, but whether people actually use it, organisations can sustain it and it contributes to meaningful improvements in how they work and deliver impact.
Programmes and Products for Wider Impact
Beyond its consulting and implementation work, 10x Impact Labs develops programmes, communities and products aimed at strengthening technology capabilities and fostering innovation across the impact sector.
For Vaibhav, these initiatives are also about creating opportunities for people to contribute their skills towards meaningful challenges. Through AI accelerators, technology fellowships and collaborative programmes, 10x Impact Labs brings together nonprofits, technologists, volunteers and philanthropic institutions to learn, experiment and build solutions together. The aim is to create a wider community of people and organisations who can contribute to technology-driven social impact.
These efforts have supported more than 60 AI fellows and the piloting of over 40 technology products, while helping nonprofit organisations explore hundreds of practical AI use cases. Beyond these numbers, the programmes aim to help organisations develop the confidence and capabilities to experiment with, adopt and integrate emerging technologies into their everyday work.
Alongside these initiatives, the team is developing AI-powered products to address common challenges across the sector, particularly in monitoring, evaluation and learning. By creating solutions that can serve multiple organisations, the aim is to make useful technology more accessible without requiring every nonprofit to build its own systems from scratch.
Partnerships with foundations, philanthropic networks and technology communities also play an important role in extending these efforts. By combining complementary expertise and resources, these collaborations help strengthen data capabilities, encourage shared learning and make technology support accessible to a wider range of organisations across different geographies.
For Vaibhav, these efforts reflect a larger belief that lasting change comes from investing in people, strengthening institutions and creating opportunities for collective learning and innovation.
Responsible AI And Data Protection
As artificial intelligence becomes more accessible, Vaibhav believes its adoption must be accompanied by a clear understanding of its risks, limitations and responsibilities. For organisations working with vulnerable communities and sensitive information, data privacy, security and responsible AI practices are particularly important.
For Vaibhav, responsible AI goes beyond data protection. It requires thoughtful design, appropriate safeguards, human oversight and accountability. He believes technology providers and organisations share the responsibility of ensuring that innovation builds trust, protects communities and creates meaningful impact without compromising their interests.
Looking Ahead
Building an organisation at the intersection of technology and social impact has brought its own challenges. From developing a sustainable business model and earning the trust of organisations to building a team and nurturing a shared culture, the journey has required constant learning and adaptation. For Vaibhav, it has also meant evolving from building products and solving problems directly to building teams, developing leaders and creating an organisation that can grow beyond its founders.
Looking ahead, Vaibhav and Tony hope to expand 10x Impact Labs’ work across the Global South and beyond, strengthening how organisations use technology, data and AI. Beyond organisational growth, their ambition is to build a sustainable institution that develops talent, encourages innovation and helps make technology expertise accessible to thousands of social impact organisations.
For aspiring social entrepreneurs, Vaibhav’s advice is to remain close to the problems they are trying to solve, listen to the people experiencing them and stay open to challenging their own assumptions. He believes that building something meaningful takes patience, a willingness to experiment and the humility to keep learning along the way.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Technology can help social organisations improve their work, but access to digital tools alone does not guarantee meaningful change. Organisations also need the knowledge, resources and confidence to choose suitable solutions, protect sensitive information and ensure that technology serves a clearly defined purpose.
Through its advisory, products, and thought leadership, 10x Impact Labs is working towards a more collaborative approach to this challenge. Its efforts highlight the importance of strengthening the ability of nonprofits and public institutions to use technology effectively, rather than simply providing them with new tools.
Ultimately, the question is not only how quickly the Impact Sector can adopt AI, but how thoughtfully it can do so. When technology is shaped around real needs, responsible practices and the experiences of the people it serves, it has a greater opportunity to contribute to lasting social impact.
What role do you think technology and AI can play in helping nonprofits create meaningful, lasting change?
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